Historical and Pictorial Guide of Woodthorpe Grange Park.Pdf

Historical and Pictorial Guide of Woodthorpe Grange Park From the date it first opened on Thursday 1st June, 1922, Woodthorpe Grange Park has been a part of the City of Nottingham for just a little over ninety-five years. For those, like myself, who have lived all their life facing Woodthorpe Park, and for those who are its visitors, it is hard to imagine life without it. In this day and age, it is all too easy to take for granted our places of communal recreation. As far as we the general public are concerned, they have always been there. But like all things in life they all had a beginning. That beginning was mostly through events that took place maybe three or four centuries ago. For example, Nottingham’s Forest Recreation Ground was one of the original areas to be protected in perpetuity by the 1845 Nottingham Enclosure Act, which set aside some 80 acres (32 hectares) for public recreational use. For over 300 years the Forest has been home to sport, including horse racing, cricket and football. In 1773 it was home to the Nottingham Racecourse, where it remained until it moved in 1892 to where it is today at Colwick. Nottingham Forest Football Club also played their first games on the Forest after its formation in 1865, hence the club's title, ‘Nottingham Forest.’ Also, and most importantly, the Forest Recreation Ground plays host to Nottingham’s annual Goose Fair. Although the Goose Fair can be traced back to the 13th century, the Goose Fair has been part of the Forest Recreation Ground since 1928 when the fair was transferred from its original site of Nottingham’s Old Market Square, after 1927 prior to its redevelopment. Travel even further back in history and you will see the Forest Recreation Ground once played its part in Nottingham’s hosiery industry, with a series of windmills which were used for spinning cotton. 1900s Forest Recreation Ground Nottingham’s Racecourse Nottingham’s Annual Goose Fair ____________________ 1 Unlike the Forest Recreation Ground’s sporting heritage, Woodthorpe Grange Park’s heritage lies in one of Nottingham’s primary industries, brick making through the Nottingham Patent Brick Company, and the expansion of Britain’s rail network with the construction of the Nottingham Suburban Railway. The brickworks, the railway and ultimately the 52 acres we know of today like the Forest Recreation Ground, the Woodthorpe Estate, as it was known as, not to be confused with today’s Woodthorpe housing Estate, began fifty-three years earlier in 1792 and the Enclosure of Basford. This was when land lot 188 was allotted by the Enclosure Commissioners of Basford (as Sherwood and Mapperley came under the Parish of Basford) to Henry Cavendish Esquire the 6th Duke of Devonshire for Tithes, and in the same area William Rawson and William Danes were allotted land lot’s 189 and 190 respectively. However, before the 1792 Enclosure of Basford, the core of the Woodthorpe Estate was marked out in a 1609 Crown Survey map of Sherwood Forest as an enclosed field that was occupied by George Hutchinson, a freeholder of the land. Land Lot 188 Henry Cavendish Esquire, 6th Duke of Devonshire The Enclosure of Sherwood and Mapperley, when it came into force, meant all the land bounded by the present-day Redcliffe Road, Mansfield Road, Private Road and Woodborough Road. In all, the Enclose Act simply meant: - “The extinction of common rights where people held over farm land and commons of the parish, the abolition of the scattered holdings in the open fields and reallocation of holdings in compact blocks, accompanied usually by the physical separation of the newly created fields and closes by the erection of fences, hedges or stone walls. Thereafter, the lands so enclosed were held ‘in severity’ that is, they were reserved for the sole use of the individual owners or their tenants.” 2 The Avenue Woodthorpe Grange Map of 1877 showing the Borough of Nottingham As an example of what the enclosure act means, the above example of the Borough of Nottingham map for 1877, look for Scout Lane, which is now Woodthorpe Drive, and you will see how the land has been divided up in to smaller portions, or as referred to by the enclosure commissioners - parcels. The land, which has been divided, is then let out to tenant farmers who pay their landlord so much in taxes or tithes, which by 1877 would have been Henry Ashwell the person who by then owned the Woodthorpe Estate. ____________________ What we know as todays Woodthorpe Grange Park began as a 40 acre farm of grass and arable land, bordered by Mansfield Road and Scout Lane (now Woodthorpe Drive) and was owned by Alfred Pogson, who in May 1871 put the land for sale at an auction, where the auctioneer, William Whitehead, produced a sketch map of the area on which it was strongly suggested a 50ft wide road should be built from Mansfield Road right through the heart of what is now Woodthorpe Park. This road was to serve the many villas which could have been built on the site. Fortunately, the houses were never built. John L. Thackeray of Arno Vale House who purchased the land in 1871, a short time later sold it onto Henry Ashwell a master bleacher, who owned factories on Radford Road in the New Basford area of Nottingham. 3 Henry Ashwell Ordnance Survey Map 1899 Ashwell bought the land in order to create his own estate complete with a private house, Woodthorpe Grange, which was built in 1874, and lived in it with his wife Sarah and two daughters, Mary and Frances, along with two nieces and four servants. The estate was extended in 1881 when Ashwell bought the small brickworks on Scout Lane (Woodthorpe Drive) from John Harrison for £655, and converted it into the rockery/dell gardens, which are now part of the park. Unfortunately for the Ashwell Family the halcyon days did not last long because in 1889 the Nottingham Suburban Railway was opened, and the line ran right across and under their estate. 4 The Rockery/Dell Gardens Although compensated financially, Ashwell was not happy about Nottingham Suburban Railway crossing right across his estate in 1889. It is recorded that he insisted that Ashwell’s Tunnel, named after him, was lengthened by 10 yards so that it would not disturb the hay ricks in his farmyard at Woodthorpe Farm. Edward Parry Shortly after the arrival of the railway, Henry Ashwell sold Woodthorpe Grange and Park to Edward Parry. Parry was a highly renowned civil engineer and amongst his many eminent positions he was Nottinghamshire County Surveyor, designer and surveyor of the Nottingham Suburban Railway line, and a director of the Nottingham Brick Company, the main beneficiary of the line. It is not clear whether Edward Parry ever actually lived in Woodthorpe Grange; in the 1891 census he is recorded as age 46, living with his wife, Mary, two daughters, four sons and three servants at Elmhurst in Lucknow Drive. In 1905 he sold Woodthorpe Grange and Park to John Godfrey Small, lace manufacturer and Mayor of Nottingham in 1917. 5 John Godfrey Small, the last occupant of Woodthorpe Grange, as Mayor of Nottingham addressing crowds during the Nottinghamshire Patriotic Fair, which was held on Whit Monday, 1917. ____________________ The Nottingham Suburban Railway Although little over 3½ miles in length the Nottingham Suburban Railway had an interesting if chequered career. It is suggested that there were two main reasons why the line was proposed by a group of local businessmen including Robert Mellors, a benefactor of the city and then chairman of the Nottingham Patent Brick Company. Firstly, the hilly area to the North East of the city contained considerable deposits of clay, a basic necessity for making bricks, which in the 1800's were needed in larger quantities for the extensive developments that were taking place throughout the country. Prior to the building of the line, the possibility of direct access to serve these brickworks had seemed very remote and in that respect the building of the Suburban line was in the nature of a self-help exercise. It was of course inevitable that the line would have to make connection with one or other of the major pre-grouping railway companies and it soon became clear that the Great Northern Railway would be the one most likely to be receptive to the scheme. That company’s station was on London Road, unfortunately not particularly convenient to the developing city. Therefore, all train services the GNR operated to the north and west of Nottingham were obliged to make the initial part of the journey via Netherfield, hence initially in the wrong 6 direction so that by the time the train had clocked up 7 miles or more it had still got no further than Daybrook, a distance of slightly over 3 miles. Robert Mellors and his colleagues saw the opportunity to attract the Great Northern Railway Company to its proposals by making connections with that company's lines, at both ends of the new line, thus providing a fairly direct route to the north and to the west of Nottingham, the burden of stiff gradients were outweighed by the reduced mileage and the likelihood of a clear run out of Daybrook as opposed to being delayed by the important and heavy flow of coal traffic between there and Colwick. So it was that a Bill was laid before Parliament in the 1886 session supported strongly by local trade organisations, the proprietors of the Nottingham Brick Company, and indeed the Nottingham Corporation itself.

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